Silly responses

I foolishly made the remark in a letter to the Advertiser yesterday that most Australians would be happy for a apology to be made to indigenous Australians.
Curiously there were six other letters making a number of alternative replies. One from the erstwhile mayor of Port Augusta assured the PM that he did not have her permission to include her in the apology, at least one other correspondent made a similar response.
Now that's as maybe but they rather miss the point. A Parliamentary response is notp one that is made on behalf of anyone as an individual it is made on behalf of the nation.
In a representative democracy one might ask who should make this apology, there are really only three persons who can actually represent the whole nation. The first is the Queen, the second the Governor General as her representative. They are both (in their roles) embodiments of the nation, but we are pretty confused about this. I think this is the purest option, but pragmatically many would be squeamish about drawing one or both of these two figureheads into this.

The third option, therefore, is the current Head of Government (as opposed to Head of State). Despite the protestations of Mayor Baluch et al, Prime Minister Rudd will not be offering her personal apology at all but the apology of the nation. There are many things an incumbent government will do which individual electors will not wish to be associated with. Too bad! That is the nature of elected government. We knew when we elected Labor that this was part of the agenda.

Personally, although this issue is littered with shades of grey and is not black and white(!); the gentle voice of Lowitja O'Donohue and of Fred Chaney (here) and other Aboriginal people welcoming this move (here for example) is enough to suggest we should do this and get it over and done with.

A quite excellent but difficult funeral

It was a very long funeral for Andrew (here). I have become more tolerant of longish eulogies and it was long. But he was a most excellent man, and there was much to say.
Apart from seeing his eldest son James take on the mantle of the eldest male, I was struck for the first time by how much he looked like Andrew. More than that, there was a very deft touch and insight which was like the ghostly mantle being passed on.
There was a tribute from a priest friend, who, I suppose, was the one of us who was sacrificed to the humiliation of crying and snorting his grief in front of the few hundred people therein gathered. I have been caught before by sudden overwhelming, unexpected grief; so it was not surprising to see numbers of us so afflicted.
Dear friend! We shall miss you. What a gift you have been to everyone who knew you! What a challenge to those of us who struggle to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek but find it too hard! If I could just be as good a priest, or half as good..or a quarter..as Andrew then I would ahve done well.
But I am nowhere close.

Blowed if I know

Is Australia Day on January 26th or not?

All the honours came out on that day, the citizenship ceremonies seem to have been then...but people keep referring to today (the Monday after...ie. the actual day we are having as a public holiday) as the same.

To confound it all (let us rejoice) shops like Myers and Harvey Normans appeared to be trading on 26th and 27th like normal. Some (most) supermarkets appearde to be open on 26th.

And (for we are young and free) most advertising about iut appeared to be encouarging people to dust off the barbie as the quintessential Australian activity.

A good one

My friend Andrew King died on Thursday. I was aware when we had lunch in October last year that it was he last time we would do so. He has been "ill" for over a decade, though he would never describe himself as 'ill'. With a particularly nasty form of leukemia he has lived on and on with various advances in treatment...some of it fairly rugged.
Andrew was a whistle blower, though again he would never call himself such. He was simply just a bloke who got on with his job and tried to do the right thing. Very perceptive, always gentle, ever-outraged by injustice...against aboriginal people, palestinians, and latterly those who had been abused by the Church.
I think he saw that the sexual and other forms of abuse that people had received at the hands of apparent servants of the Church, both lay and clerical, paled into insignificance when compared with the abuse that those who sort to report such heinous offences were put through.
Put through by indifference, apathy, the game playing of bishops of their lackeys...men who thought they were so bloody pastoral that they failed to see that they were the problem and not the solution!
Amidst all this Andrew was a curious husband, father, and friend. Ever gentle, always true. I shall miss him. We all shall miss him.

The Eleventh thing

We were all a bit gobsmacked in our household to hear of the death of Heath Ledger. One of his lesser known movies Ten Things I hate about you is one of my  favourite movies of all time. Wesat down and watchged it only last week. It is a take off of the Taming of the Shrew and at the end of it the erstwhile Caterina reads a poem she has written abvout their tragi-comic love affair.
It goes:

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair.
I hate the way you drive my car.
I hate it when you stare.
I hate your big dumb combat boots, and the way you read my mind.
I hate you so much it makes me sick; it even makes me rhyme.
I hate the way you're always right.
I hate it when you lie.
I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you're not around, and the fact that you didn't call.
But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you.
Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

One can only add the eleventh... I hate the appalling waste!

The Academic Dilemma

During the week Pope Benedict cancelled a visit to one of Rome's universities (here).
This sort of stuff really gets my goat. Bastions of intellectual scholarship and academic freedom can't have it both ways. Either you allow all viewpoints or you don't.
Even the ones you don't like.
No one is suggesting that the Roman Catholic Church (or any other church for that matter) is without blame when it comes to using their own might to promote their own (often rather poor) opinions, but we live in a robust world. It seems to me it is better to hear what people have to say than to force them not to say it.

Signs of the Intergenerational Times

Sitting in the library
wirelessly connected
to the public library internet service
father-in-law sitting on one of their swish new computers over the way
the youngest SC, his grandaughter,
next to him on Facebook

Unbelievable and yet strangely believable!

Choking on one's muesli, I had to laugh to hear Malcolm Turnbull say that the task for the incoming Labor Government was to not blame the previous Government for the financial mess that it inherited.
This is rich coming from a party which continued, up until it was removed from power, to blame the governments of Hawke and Keating for over a decade after those Labor governments set up the financial structures which allowed the Liberals to capitalise on a deregulated environment which they themselves had failed to establish. This despite having been in power for most of the four decades from the 40s to the 80s.
I think the electorate at the last election found this all wore a bit thin, at what point would the Howard Government actually take responsibility for having got somethings wrong as well as taking the (often unwarranted) credit for having got things right?
Turnbull is right, in a way, the Rudd government will need to accept responsibility for what they do. But give them a break...it has only been weeks since they took over!

Rather good

Not every You Tube about the environment is good but this is quiet measured

The incredible benefit of backstabbing

Will we ever understand the election process of the US? I doubt it. What we're witnessing at the moment is virtually the parties selecting their candidates, not the voting of the people for a new president. Commentary is both effulgent and effusive (see here for example) and we are warned that the dirty tricks have only just begun.
In Oz this takes place out of public view, what ever Howard said about Costello and vice versa, was firmly kept behind locked doors. What Clinton and Obama say about each other, or McCain and Romney will be said out in the open.
This public backstabbing is riveting stuff, even from the Antipodes. It has the advantage of ( win lose or draw) knowing what your "friends" can say about you in the event that you become your party's anointed. This is a benefit in a way that Howard and Costello must attest to, part (at least) of what caused their downfall was the electorate's uncertainty about them. What did they really think about each other?
Had there been blindingly open critique in the selection process, the whispering campaign would have been sliced into tiny little pieces. But it was not to be
It is always faintly amusing to watch the way the Democrats and Republican get behind their chose candidate eventually. Obama or Clinton will stand side by side and attest that the other was the best thing since Drive In Movies, despite the fact that this week she called him a hypocrite and a liar.
The big mistake (of course ) that the Democrats have made is in wanting either the first woman or the first black person, they should have concatenated the two. But I suppose Dr Rice is a Republican!

Unbelievable

I took a brief trip back from Goolwa Beach yesterday via the river front of the River Murray Estuary.
If you are down that way you should go, as it is appalling and I guess you don't take it in until you see it. Or at least I didn't.
The very lovely bird-hide in the reeds at the end of Bristow Smith Avenue, is now at least 100 metres away from any water (previously a couple of metres), and th famous Jet Skis are this year not running because the water is too shallow.
Now the river is a funny place. I can remember the carp plague of the mid 70s when you could go to the barrages and dip a paper bag in and catch (if you wanted to) any number of fish...just throw the bag away as it would have disintegrated!
God help us if we don't fix this up.
Would that the picture (left) of former days would soon return!

Latent racism

Appertaining to the post below southozbloke makes an interesting comment to which I reply:

My mother once told me that she was very impressed with Dr Hedley Beare, who was for some time I think Director General of Education in the Territory.
Her abiding memory was of him making the observation that "Everyone is racist!"
It is of course so obvious that we almost don't realise it. It was reiterated by my friend AndrewKing, who has very keen insight into such issues

Dulce et decorum est

It's good and appropriate, that sometimes people of colour should be castigated for their racism against whites. (here)
Aahhhh sledging...should we take it seriously?

All that glisters

It's great fun to be able to watch movies galore during the holiday season. We enjoyed National Treasure 2 (albeit an insignificant romp of little artistic, film or literary merit) of far greater significance is The Golden Compass touted to be the next best thing since Lord of the Rings. It has attracted some attention for being 'anti-religious', a criticism I find laughable really.
It is after all a story and a fantasy at that. (But read one prominent review here )
Of course, as such, it presents a different cosmology, and indeed theology. In so far as it addresses the biq questions it is not going to agree with 'orthodoxy' of any sort.
What disturbs me about the round condemnations (the one quoted from the Sydney-Anglican-Machine but there are huge sledge hammers from the Roman Catholic Church doing the rounds also) is that 'authorities' seem to think that good folk have no brain and can't tell what is story and what is theology or philosophy.
They, of course, argue that this stuff is aimed at kids and that they may believe what they dont ought to!
What rubbish! In reality Wind in the Willows has talking animals, Sleeping Beauty has wisked witches...and don't start me about Enid Blyton and latent racism!
If we are going to protect everyone from everything by banning what we think is in some way unacceptable then we do them s disservice.
As a parent, it seems to me that what you want to give to your children is a not a cocoon but the tools to evaluate for themselves what is wrong. So after we saw the Golden Compass we had a bit of a talk about it.
I personally am not afraid of ideas, nor afraid of my children (or others) not agreeing with me. I do not have such an insatiable desire to be infallible, that I cannot bear the slightest eviation from someone's idea of orthodoxy.
If we do not allow people to be marginally wrong, how on earth do we ever explore anything?How can we expand people's consciousness? How can we develop independent thought in anyone?
This actually seems to be what this Movie is about. So let's not be so paranoic!

Apology is as apology does

Two interesting questions about apologies hover around us. One is the apparently bizarres suggestion that David Hicks, having now served his sentence, should apologise for what he has done.
This might be nice, but it is hardly a legal requisite. Given the fact that there are also big questions about the nature of his internment any way, and no apology forthcoming from either American or Australian governments to him, then perhaps it should all be left well alone.
We also wonder about if and when the Rudd government will apologise to the stolen generations. I guess they will, and I suppose they will also pick their time.
Australia Day would seem opportune. We shall have to wait and see!

New Year

There will be those who will think that the scorching temperatures are indicative of global warming!
I am not a denier, but they are not (on their own) evidence per se! It was wonderful to wander around at midnight last night and watch the fireworks in the wramth of the hot evening.
Here at Port Eliott, today, it was not 40 it was 25! 80 kms away from Adelaide (where it was 40) and 10-15 degrees cooler! Beautiful.
It would of course be ludicrous to suggest that Adelaide is in the grips of global warming and Port Elliott is not! We need to appreciate that global warming is a long-term and not a short term (year to year) trend. If average temperatures have gone up by 2, 3 or 10 degrees in 50 years time then there will indeed have been a trend, but this does not happen statistically from year to year.
As I think back through our post Christmas holidays over the last two decades they have (if anything) been cooler than the late 60s and 70s. So let's not be silly!
Meanwhile we have really appreciated the 4 minute timer for the shower which seems to have worked for all. Now water! That is a real and immediate problem!!
Happy New Year. Watch the water!